In re S.D.

After one of Mother’s five children, a toddler, was rushed to the emergency room and placed on a ventilator, Mother consented to the Department of Child Services (DCS) removing the other four children from her care to let her focus on the toddler’s treatment. DCS initiated child in need of services (CHINS) proceedings over all five of the children based on the toddler’s special medical needs and Mother’s lack of steady housing and other needs for the children. After a fact-finding hearing, the trial court released wardship to Mother’s four oldest children but did find the toddler in need of services because no one in the home had “completed the medical training needed” to meet the toddler’s special medical needs. The Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s judgment that the toddler was a child in need of services, holding that because Mother had voluntarily addressed all but one of DCS’s concerns to the trial court’s satisfaction and because the evidence failed to show that Mother was likely to need the court’s coercive intervention to complete that final item, the trial court abused its discretion in determining that the toddler was a child in need of services. View "In re S.D." on Justia Law